Abstract
The struggle over the political legacy of Ronald Reagan is as intense now as it was when he left the White House in 1989. In fact, two different, though clearly related, struggles are taking place. One mostly takes place in academic circles and concerns Reagan’s rightful place in the annals of American history. The other takes place in the political arena and concerns his place in the public imagination and the American heritage.1
Reagan belongs on Mount Rushmore, and he’ll be there, after the carpers die off.
William F. Buckley Jr.
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Notes
For a recent scholarly work that grants President Reagan the role as metonymy for an era, see Gil Troy, Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
Conservative attempts to remedy this include Martin Anderson, Revolution: The Reagan Legacy (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1990 [1988]).
William F. Buckley, Jr., Ronald Reagan: An American Hero (London: DK Publishing, 2001).
Dinesh D’Souza, Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan, 1964–1980: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order (Roseville: Prima Lifestyles, 2001).
Peggy Noonan, When Character was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan (New York: Penguin, 2002).
Peter Robinson, How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life (New York: Regan Books, 2004).
Peter Schweizer, Reagan’s War (New York: Anchor Books, 2002).
and Peter Wallison, Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency (Boulder: Westview Press, 2004).
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “The Ultimate Approval Rating,” New York Times Magazine (December 15, 1996), 46–51.
See Alvin S. Felzenberg, “ ‘There You Go Again’: Liberal Historians and the New York Times Deny Ronald Reagan His Due,” Policy Review (March–April, 1997).
See James Piereson, “Historians and the Reagan Legacy,” The Weekly Standard, 3 (3) (September 29, 1997): 22–24.
Peggy Noonan, “Why We Talk About Reagan,” Wall Street Journal (February 8, 2002), A18.
George C. Edwards, “Comparing Chief Executives,” Public Opinion (June–July, 1985), 54.
Quoted from Robert Dallek, Hail to the Chief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 82.
Frank Newport, Jeffrey M. Jones, and Lydia Saad, “Ronald Reagan From the People’s Perspective: A Gallup Poll Review,” The Gallup Poll, June 7, 2004, http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?CI=11887.
Adam Meyerson, Editorial, Policy Review, July and August, 1997, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3573507.html.
George Will, “Is It Safe to Be a Liberal Again?” The Washington Post (May 5, 1998), C07.
Barry Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 12.
Quoted from Michael Mechanic, “Sugarcoating Reagan,” Mother Jones, March 1, 2001, http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2001/03/reagan_DUP2.html.
See Nicholas Confessore, “Reagan Unremembered; Teflon,” The New Republic (April 30, 2001), 18–20.
J. Jennings Moss, “Reverence for FDR Crosses Spectrum—Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” Insight on the News, May 15, 1995, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n19_v11/ai_16951818.
Merrill D. Peterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960).
John Burroughs quoted from Alan Havig, “Presidential Images, History, and Homage: Memorializing Theodore Roosevelt, 1919–1967,” American Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Autumn 1978): 514–532.
Jim Abrams, “Too Soon for Reagan memorial on the Mall,” Chicago Sun-Times, March 9, 2001, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20010309/ai_n13893516/print.
Monte Reel, “Preservation Law Puts Leash on Mall Projects,” The Washington Post, November 20, 2003, P. DZ10.
Quoted from Jim Geraghty, “A Dime Worth a Difference,” National Review Online, December 10, 2003, http://www.nationalreview.com/geraghty/geraghty200312100838.asp.
Steven G. Calabresi, “Reagan Belongs on Kings Row; Why Envious Professors Won’t Give the Gipper his Due,” Opinion Journal, December 4, 2000, http://www.opinionjournal.com/hail/under.html?id=65000721.
The quote is from Gertrude Himmelfarb’s essay, “Of Heroes, Villains and Valets.” In On Looking into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 38.
Gertrude Himmelfarb, “The Roar,” The New Republic, Vol. 225, No. 22 (November 26, 2001): 26.
David Frum, “What Makes a Man of the Century?” The Weekly Standard (January 10, 2000), Vol. 5, No. 16.
See Grover G. Norquist, Michael Reagan, Phil Gramm, Ralph Reed, Elliott Abrams, Gary L. Bauer, Frank Keating, Trent Lott, Christopher Cox, David Beasley, James C. Miller, Richard K. Armey, David McIntosh, and Jean Kirkpatrick, “Reagan Betrayed,” Policy Review, Issue 84 (July/August 1997).
The notion of constructing the memory of the nation’s past presidents to serve present political needs is by no means new. For examples, see Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Merril D. Peterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960).
and Barry Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000).
Quoted from Gloria Borger, “In Search of Mount Reagan,” U.S. News & World Report, Vol. 123, No. 23 (December 15, 1997): 35.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “He Knew How to Lead People,” Newsweek, Vol. 143, Issue 24 (June 14, 2004): 44.
See also Karl Zinsmeister, “Summing Up the Reagan Era,” The Wilson Quarterly (Winter, 1990): 110 ff.
and James T. Patterson, Restless Giant; The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 162–170.
Hugh Heclo, “Ronald Reagan and the American Public Philosophy,” in W. Elliot Brownlee & Hugh Davis Graham, The Reagan Presidency; Pragmatic Conservatism and Its Legacies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 17 ff.
and Joshua Green, “Reagan’s Liberal Legacy; What the new literature on the Gipper won’t tell you”. Washington Monthly, January/February, 2003 (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0301.green.html).
See John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). One might of course argue that it was Reagan’s conservative credentials that made it possible for him to overcome resistance at home and secure support for the treaty in the U.S. Senate.
Quoted from Richard Reeves, President Reagan; The Triumph of Imagination (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 446.
Quoted from Jacob V. Lamar, Jr., “An Offer They Can Refuse,” Time, December 14, 1987, http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,966229,00.html.
Bill Keller, “The Radical Presidency of George W. Bush; Reagan’s Son,” The New York Times Magazine, January 26, 2003, http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00616FF39540C758EDDA80894DB404482.
For conservative stories of betrayal, see Bruce Bartlett, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy (New York: Doubleday, 2006).
and Michael D. Tanner, Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2007).
Richard Viguerie, “What Reagan Revolution?” The Washington Post (August 21, 1988): C2.
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© 2008 Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies
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Bjerre-Poulsen, N. (2008). The Road to Mount Rushmore: The Conservative Commemoration Crusade for Ronald Reagan. In: Hudson, C., Davies, G. (eds) Ronald Reagan and the 1980s. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616196_13
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